Green skills V
Start date: Jan 1, 2015,
End date: Jun 30, 2016
PROJECT
FINISHED
Green Skill V was a small EVS project in RELEARN Suderbyn involving 3 volunteers from 01/04/2015 till 05/05/2016. In April 2015 we received a volunteer from Hungary and a volunteer from Spain. The volunteer from Hungary stayed the full service of 12 months. The volunteer from Spain ended the project after four months because of several reasons. After one month another volunteer from Spain came in her place and completed the 8 months which were still available in the GS V project. The volunteers were selected by their personal motivation and willingness to learn new things. The main aim of RELEARN Suderbyn is to reach out to society with our ideas of sustainable and holistic living coming from the experience in Suderbyn Permaculture Ecovillage, our national, regional and European ecovillage networks. With the Green Skills Programme we want to offer young persons the possibility to experience this way of living in the social, ecological, economic and cultural dimensions of an ecovillage and to develop themselves in a more holistic way. In this way we hope to spread our ideas about a more sustainable and holistic lifestyle to the volunteers. We hope the experience will create a multiplying effect that will spread to other countries in Europe and outside.
The Green Skills Programme, developed from the experience of the previous six Green Skills projects, offered the volunteers a complete package of healthy sustainable lifestyle and ecovillage life, involving practical tasks performed gender neutrally such as permaculture gardening, organic and vegetarian/vegan cooking, ecological building and forestry as well as all other issues concerning ecovillage life such as community building, conflict solving, administrative and organisational issues and collective decision making. Suderbyn offered the volunteers more esoteric learning opportunities in areas such as wood carving and meditation. The volunteers participated in Let's inherit the Earth! seminar organized by IAL. The training covered a variety of topics and equipped the participants with tools in the social, ecological and economical dimensions of sustainability. Suderbyn also provided Swedish classes. Meetings and reflection time were offered to the volunteers to deepen their learnings and to adapt the work plan to the needs of the volunteers and the organisation.
The main Project Objectives of Green Skills V were:
1)To offer participatory and relevant informal learning of skills for sustainable living to foster personal, social
and professional development and eventually to improve employment prospects for volunteers;
2)To learn through outreach activities to disseminate the knowledge to a broader audience.
3)To provide non-formal studies in Swedish and informal studies in Swedish/English and comparative culture for
multilingualism and intercultural understanding;
4) To develop a feeling of solidarity, tolerance and mutual understanding between European youths facing the same challenges.